THE INDEPENDENT: He swaggered into the Elysée Palace on a promise to reinvent France for the 21st century. But after just eight months, Nicolas Sarkozy's popularity is plummeting – and his personal life is becoming a soap opera. Is he up to the job? John Lichfield reports
Tuesday, 12 February 2008
Imagine, for a moment, President Charles de Gaulle in dark glasses and dark roll-top jumper sitting at a café terrace in Versailles with his newly married pop-singer wife.Imagine also le Général in open-neck shirt and jeans on an Egyptian holiday. The tall, austere saviour of France is walking, hand in hand, with Mick Jagger's ex-girlfriend. Her small son sits on his shoulders, looking embarrassed.
Imagine, for a moment, President Jacques Chirac in the Vatican, fiddling compulsively with the buttons of his mobile phone as his companions are being presented to the Pope. The presidential entourage includes, incidentally, France's most vulgar and foul-mouthed comedian, Jean-Marie Bigard, a kind of Gallic Bernard Manning.
Imagine, for a moment, President François Mitterrand receiving ministerial visits to his office in the Elysée Palace with his feet up on his desk. Worse, imagine the suave, icy President Mitterrand addressing almost everyone he meets with the familiar "tu", instead of the dignified and respectful "vous".
In his eight months as French head of state, Nicolas Sarkozy has done all these things and more. Genres have been confused, values muddled, conventions trampled, traditions overturned.
President Sarkozy promised last year to reinvent France for the 21st century, while preserving, or rekindling, "traditional values". He has started by reinventing – or, some say, desecrating – the French presidency. Nicolas Sarkozy: The problem with the president >>> By John Lichfield
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